The monumental tomb is placed on the main hill located immediately north of the old city ("la Civita").
In the Poggio Gallinaro mound was deposed a member of the highest Tarquinian aristocracy, as is attested not only by the monumentality of the tomb, but also by some funerary objects. The discovery of ivory picks, kneaded figurines representing the "mourning" women and of two miniature bucchero models of a doubleheaded axe documents in fact a funerary rite linked to the particular social relevance of the deceased. Moreover, the monumental tomb stands on a hill located close to "la Civita", symbolically indicating the dominance over the area by a noble family closely linked to the city. According to a recent hypothesis, the deceased buried here could have been the promoter of the sacred monumental area in the centre of the "Pian di Civita" (excavations of the Università di Milano) who ordered the burial of a princely votive deposit consisting of symbols of power such as the axe, the shield and the lituus in bronze (conserved in the Museo di Tarquinia).